A worker shovels coal into a supply truck at a construction site on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India October 25, 2018. REUTERS/Amit Dave

NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR, May 24 (Reuters) – State-owned Coal India (COAL.NS), will open what is expected to be one of the country’s biggest coal mines this year, officials said, as the India is struggling to keep pace with rising demand.

Production at the new Siarmal mine in eastern Odisha state would gradually increase, reaching a capacity of 50 million tonnes in about five to seven years, Vinayak Jamwal, a spokesman for the state, told Reuters. Coal India Mahanadi Coalfields (MCL) unit.

Production would initially begin in the October-December quarter at an annualized rate of around 2-5 million tonnes, Jamwal said.

Coal India’s record output was a bright spot in efforts to end India’s worst energy crisis in more than six years as a heat wave spiked demand for electricity and forced the government to reverse a policy of reducing coal imports.

India, which also plans to reopen closed mines to deal with the crisis, did not say how the search for more coal would meet the country’s emissions targets, but repeated that it plans to. install 450 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy by 2030.

India now has a total power generation capacity of 401 GW, of which 111.4 GW is renewable energy.

Jamwal said work is continuing on infrastructure at Siarmal, an open pit mine built in a partially forested area.

No Indian mine produced more than 50 million tons of coal in one year. The Gevra coal mine, India’s largest, aims to produce 52 million tonnes this year.

Coal India plans to open two more mines with a combined annual capacity of 7 million tonnes in the fiscal year ending March 2023, officials said, adding opening plans are unlikely of seven new mines this fiscal year come to fruition.

At a time when energy consumption is growing at its fastest rate in about four decades, the state railroad is struggling to supply enough coal to utilities, leaving them with their lowest pre-summer inventory levels. low for at least nine years.

Coal India, which accounts for 80% of India’s domestic production, plans to produce 700 million tonnes of coal in 2022 and aims to reach an annual production of 1 billion tonnes by 2025.

Reporting by Sudarshan Varadhan; Additional reporting by Nupur Anand; Editing by Edmund Blair

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